A clip coming to stop recycling flying
It is a local solution to a local problem – Wellington City Council is designing wheelie bin clips to stop our recycling being blown away.
The issue of dealing with low-weightrecycling in Wellington’s famous wind came to the surface in the South Coast suburb of Island Bay this week, when a collector failed to pick-up recycling from a man who had secured his bin with rope but took his neighbour’s, whose was secured with a bungee cord.
Wellington City Council waste operations manager Adrian Mitchell said, in this case, the collector mistakenly thought the rope attached to the bin was tied to the fence and that was why the bin was not emptied.
‘‘On the issue of bungee cords, we do empty bins when the lid is secured by bungee cords but the use of bungees is not ideal as they can spring back when released with the hook capable of hurting our collector.’’
The council had a prototype clip that would hold bins closed and stop recycling from being blown away, which they hoped to unveil in March..
Clark Meister, who has lived at the peak of the Island Bay’s Frobisher St for 23 years, reckons he is in one of Wellington’s windiest spots.
His own weather station recorded a 185kmh gust on Thursday afternoon.
While the clip wouldn’t stop his main problem, of the entire bin being blown away, it was still a good idea, he said.
‘‘There’s lots of other areas that aren’t as windy as ours.’’
His solution to make sure his bin didn’t simply blow away this week was to sling a rope over the recycling bin to hold the lid down.
A sticker on Meister’s bin told him it was not collected because it was tied to the fence, though it actually was not.
It would have taken the collector just seconds to unhook the rope, and his rubbish bin – which was collected by a private company and often secured by rope – always got collected, he said.
‘‘It must have taken him more time to go back to the truck, get the sticker, write on it, and stick it on.’’
Across the road neighbour Petra Inglin secured her wheelie bin’s lid with a bungy cord and her recycling was taken away without issue.
Apart from each windy recycling day when enough of her neighbour’s recycling blew in that her bin was soon filling fast again.